2008年7月30日 星期三

如果你問我今年書展有甚麼收穫

關於鍾曉陽,多年前我寫了一篇好像叫《鍾曉陽童話》的東西,文章跟另一題為《黃碧雲神話》的相對,大抵當時竊以為,前者關乎人格成長,後者涉及欲望實現;前者是一個不斷在相互作用中完成的故事,後者為我們寫下模楷,供後人仿效。

今天,仍有人作形形色色的類黃碧雲書寫。讀者見證一個又一個小黃碧雲出土。葉細細、趙眉......本來是她筆下的角色,成為一個又一個別人的筆名。鍾曉陽呢?她的徒子徒孫去了哪裡?或者貼切點問:她有過徒子徒孫嗎?

如果今天我們問:誰還會去效法鍾曉陽?或者我們更該問:有人曾經模仿過她嗎?當然,潛台詞是兩邊走的--要麼,鍾曉陽是不可模仿的;要麼,她根本不值得學習。

然後是她在香港書展2008立了一個講題:停車莫再問。我今天在香港電影評論學會的辦公室外,望著坐在窗邊的會長張偉雄,禁不住說了一句:憑窗莫再問。《七劍》中的傅青主,用的便是莫問劍。鍾曉陽真有如此的蒼桑,要我們一眾粉絲莫再問?

為甚麼不可以。也是她粉絲的你高聲嚷道。她停車之後,太多遺恨,燃燒透盡之後,都槁木死灰了,還問她有沒有蒼桑?

好吧好吧,但你我這等粉絲又為何最終沒有出席那個講座呢?真的因為人多,擠得據說連朱文文也要向隅門外?真的因為我們相信保持距離始終明智,就保留一些最後捨不得的優雅與淒美?

《燃燒之後》,鍾曉陽第一次把短髮的本人肖像作為著作封面。《停車暫借問》重版,戴著金絲眼鏡的她又再亮相封面。粉絲們便說:夠了,讓我們遠遠的站著,在這邊遠遠的看好了。

如果你問我今年書展有甚麼收穫,請容我答:大抵是最終沒有出席鍾曉陽的講座吧。 (相片由tsw提供)

2008年7月20日 星期日

The Levite of Ephraim

偶然的機會讀了盧梭的《以法蓮山地的利未人》,忽然覺得,這便是那「黑天鵝」(black swan)。在拿起《對話錄》之前,我根本聽也未聽過這部作品的存在。(真奇怪,《懺悔錄》不曉得是怎樣讀的。)它的重要性事前完全不可逆料。

盧梭年輕時便失眠,失眠的夜他愛讀《聖經》,同一個故事往往讀上六七遍。我也讀過《士師記》,但只記得耶弗他(他的獻女故事總令人想起格林童話《沒有手的姑娘》和法國童話《美女與野獸》)和參孫。利未人這個故事荒唐得很,也許實在太荒唐了,盧梭在逃亡的過程裡,「找點事做」,第一時間便想起出走前剛再讀過的這段經文。

這裡引用特拉維夫大學政治學教授Michael S. Kochin的英文重述:

The Levite journeys south from the far hill country of Ephraim to Bethlehem to retrieve his concubine from her father's house. The couple are reconciled, but the girl's father so delights in feasting the Levite that he compells them to tarry in their return for several days. When the Levite finally insists on setting out with his concubine and servant, it is already late in the day. Unwilling to stop at the heathen city of Jebus (Jerusalem), the Levite's party find themselves at nightfall in the hilltop village of Gibeah in the land of the tribe of Benjamin. They seek hospitality but no one takes them in until an old man comes and brings them home, a man who is himself not a Benjaminite but a member of the tribe of Ephraim sojourning in Gibeah.

The old man feasts the Levite, but while they are still at upper a gang of thugs surround the old man's house and demand that the Levite be brought out to them "that they might know him," that is, as we would say, rape him. The old man, appalled by the violation of hospitality, offers to appease the thugs by sending out his virgin daughter and the Levite's concubine. The gang is not appeased, but the Levite grabs his concubine and thrusts her out of the house into their hands. The gang proceeds to rape and torture her through the night. At dawn they "send her on her way," and she somehow finds her way back to the door of the Ephraimite host.

The Levite gets up to go on his way, but he is astonished to see his concubine collapsed at the door, "with her hands on the threshold." He calls to her to get up and go, but she does not answer. He puts her on his donkey and continues north to his home in the land of Ephraim. When the Levite get home, he takes a big knife of the type used for animal sacrifice and cuts her into twelve parts and sends the parts "throughout the entire bounded-off-land of Israel." "And everyone who saw [this] said 'there has not been and there as not be seen such as this, from the day in which the Children of Israel came up from the Land of Egypt until this day: Attend to this all of you, let us take counsel and speak'" (Judges 19:30, my trans.)

The sign of the limbs brings together "all of the Children of Israel," north and south, east and west. They gather four hundred thousand strong at Mitzpeh (a few miles from the village of Gibeah) to understand what has happened. The Levite narrates the awful events, not without a certain amount of convenient emendation, whereupon the Children of Israel resolve to demand that the tribe of Benjamin yield up the gang of thugs, and make war on Benjamin when the Benjaminites mobilize to defend Gibeah rather than yield up the evildoers.

The war is prosecuted with difficulty; but after two days of failure amid tremendous losses, the united tribes finally succeed in crushing the Benjaminites, not just in Gibeah but in the entire land of Benjamin. Only six hundred Benjaminite males escape, and their wives and children have been slaughtered. The other Israelites are unwilling to see the tribe of Benjamin extinguished, but are unable to repopulate the tribe by granting the remnant their own daughters because, the narrator says, they had before the battle commenced taken an oath at Mitzpeh not to give their daughters to the men of Benjamin (Judges 21:1). Fortunately the Israelites find a creative way to evade the terms of the oath: They first send an expedition to slaughter the men of Jabesh Gilead, an Israelite town in Transjordan whose lives and possessions were forfeit for having failed to answer the call of the limbs and come up to Mitzpeh. But as the expedition slaughters all of the men and adult women, and spares only the virgins, they return with only four hundred "brides"; The Israelites do not consider this to be a sufficient restoration, and so counsel the Benjaminites to seize brides from the girls of Shiloh, when they go out during the vintage festival to dance in the vineyards, and carefully direct them along the byways so as to ambush the girls without alerting their fathers and brothers. The Israelites catechize themselves to justify the virgin-unequipped Benjaminites' behavior by reference to the oath and the shortage of virgins from the punitive raid on Jabesh Gilead: "You didn't give them to the Benjaminites, they took them."; the Israelites propose to say, so that the father and brothers of Shiloh at least have the consolation that they have not broken their oath. This 'Rape of the Shilonite Women" comes off without difficulties from any party, and "The Children of Israel then went each man to his tribe and family, and each man returned to his own allotment of land." And, in case the reader wondered, "In those days there was no king in Israel; a man did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:24-25, cf. 19:1).

盧梭的改寫,主要是把這故事浪漫化。《The Levite of Ephraim》這篇散文詩,既是他的「治療」,也是他的復仇(revenge)。

2008年7月15日 星期二

也許這是我的唯一

再見了
其實也很晚了
你叫我回到某個書寫世界
也許這也是我唯一的吧
我緩步走向山坡
那裡有兔
我躲在樹後
鳥兒在叫
頭上甚麼在飛
然後終於曉得
世界誕生在冀及之外

2008年7月4日 星期五

我們失去了他的21克

歐亨尼奧.蒙特霍
Eugenio Montejo(1938-2008)
大地轉動讓我們靠近
The Earth Turned to Bring Us Closer

大地轉動讓我們靠近
她自己轉,在我們裡面轉
最終在此夢裡 讓大家團圓
如《饗宴》所寫所說

一夜一夜過去,雪降,冬至;
每分每秒間,億年萬年間 時間消逝
往尼尼微路上的牛車
卻到了內布拉斯加
站在世界外某處的公雞,啼著
是我們的父 某個千世前生

大地在樂韻中轉動
讓我們佇立其上;
永不為改變某一刻停下
如同太多愛,太多奇蹟
藏於寫下經年的慢板樂章
在《饗宴》裡